GEORGE TOWN, Oct 9 — The proposal for staggered school holidays to reduce crowds at local tourism spots was only meant for shorter breaks in March, June and September, said Tourism, Culture and Arts Deputy Minister Muhammad Bakhtiar Wan Chik.
The Balik Pulau MP said he did not mean this should also apply for the long year-end school holidays.
“We have already prepared a paper on this proposal and we want to discuss this with the Education Department,” he said.
He said they still need more data such as hotel occupancy rates during school holidays before sending the paper to the education department and discussing this proposal.
He proposed that school holidays for the first three terms of school be staggered according to regions.
“Maybe we can stagger it between northern, southern and the east coast region so that schools in these three different regions have school breaks on different weeks,” he said.
He claimed introducing staggered school breaks according to different regions will not require much change.
“The education department will need to work it out administratively, especially corresponding with exams, but it can be done,” he said.
He said having staggered holidays will spread out domestic tourism around the country.
“If we look at Melaka and Cameron Highlands during the school holidays, these places are so crowded and jammed,” he said in a press conference after the opening of the National Archaeology Seminar here.
He pointed out that weekends are staggered for some states where Kedah, Johor, Kelantan and Terengganu have their weekends on Fridays and Saturdays.
He said tourism contributes 14.9 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country so it is a key to the country’s economic growth.
“There are 3.2 million Malaysians working in the tourism industry so this is an important industry that we should improve,” he said.
With staggered school holidays, he said tourist spots in the country will have a steady stream of domestic tourists instead of currently experiencing over-crowding only during school holidays.
He pointed out that it is common to have staggered holidays in other countries such as in Australia and the United States.
